BMW’s technologically advanced i3 city car scored a lowly 57 per cent for pedestrian protection, with the assessment notes stating the “front edge of the bonnet was poor”. However, it managed a score of 86 per cent for adult occupant protection and 81 per cent for child protection.

BMW Australia general manager of corporate communications Lenore Fletcher suggested to Drive that the result paints a worse picture for the i3 than otherwise could be expected.

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Fletcher suggested the result didn’t tell the full story for the car’s pedestrian safety.

“One of the things that isn’t actually taken into account is that the new i3 is also offered with a pedestrian warning and automatic braking function,” Fletcher said.

“We were aware of it,” Fletcher said. “Besides anything else, we’ve received really good ratings for child and occupant safety.”

“We don’t think it’s going to have any effect,” Fletcher said of the potential impact on the brand’s image.

“In some cases a four-star car in Europe is a five-star car here, and vice versa. There needs to be some clarity.

“I think we’re going to see this possibly consumer confusion extend unless we are going to see the guidelines for crash testing become clearer.”

Ford’s EcoSport mini SUV also received a low rating for pedestrian protection of 58 per cent, but managed a high 93 per cent for adult occupant protection and 77 per cent for child occupants.

Ford Australia communications and public affairs director Sinead Phipps said the brand was aware of the four-star rating in Europe, but it hopes a local assessment may yield a higher score due to the differing criteria.

“Pedestrian safety is becoming more and more of a priority for car companies,” Phipps said. “That is a significant part of the development process.

“We don’t yet have the Australian rating for EcoSport,” Phipps said. “We do hope there will be a difference.”

Phipps echoed the calls for more clarity in the testing regime.

“Consistency is always better, and a clear message is always better, no matter what the message,” Phipps said, though she added that most Australian buyers will mainly consider the Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) test rating rather than the European score.

“As a number of the different NCAPs move forward … they can probably never keep up fast enough,” Phipps said, suggesting the goalposts are constantly moving as car companies introduce new safety technologies.

Another four-star rating released by EuroNCAP was for the Volkswagen T5 van range, which includes the Transporter, Multivan and Caravelle models. It managed just 32 per cent for pedestrian protection, with “poor protection to the pedestrians’ legs”.

ANCAP chief executive officer Nicholas Clarke told Drive that both the i3 and EcoSport will be considered for a local assessment, which may alter their respective star ratings.

However, Clarke defended pedestrian safety ratings, stating that cars should be designed to be safe for all road users, not just those inside the car.

“Pedestrian protection is a very important part of road safety - a third of the Australian annual road toll is what we term ‘vulnerable road users’, such as cyclists and pedestrians,” Clarke said.

“I’m not sure what the car companies are complaining about - you’ve got to build a car that’s safe for all road users,” Clarke said.

Clarke indicated that optional added-cost safety systems - such as the autonomous braking system that can be added to the BMW i3 model in Europe - will increasingly need to be fitted as standard to passenger vehicles if car companies want to achieve five-star ratings in future.

“We don’t want manufacturers making customers pay for safety,” Clarke said. “If people want to pay for extras, they can pay for leather seats, sunroofs or alloy wheels. They shouldn’t have to pay for safety, that’s fundamental.

“In the European NCAP test regime from January 2014 it will be near impossible to get a five-star rating without safety systems like autonomous emergency braking,” he said, adding “and we will follow suit”.

“In that regard, the vehicles will be rewarded as the technology is picked up.

“There are always new safety technologies being introduced by car manufacturers. We want to encourage the manufacturers to bring in all the new technologies today,” Clarke said.

Mercedes-Benz’s Citan small van was reassessed following an embarrassing three-star rating earlier in 2013. It received a rating of four stars second time around, with improvements to its child occupant safety rating (up from 69 per cent to 81 per cent) and adult protection (74 per cent to 79 per cent).

Mercedes-Benz Australia senior manager of corporate communications, David McCarthy, reiterated that the star rating was not the primary obstacle standing in the way of the brand launching the van locally.

“The issue for us has been the variants available,” he said. “When we made the decision to put it on hold, it was because we couldn’t choose the drivetrain we wanted.

“Until we can get the variants we want, we won’t be bringing it,” he said.

70 comments so far

Why does pedestrian safety change the ranking? That is stupid! Very few crashes involve pedestrians and it is doubtful many buyers would care about pedestrian safety when buying a car. First and foremost is the safety of one's own family. This is a bastardisation of the whole system. Pedestrian crash information should be totally separate, but equally available to consumers, so they know what the stars are for (only for occupant safety).

Commenter

Peds?

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November 28, 2013, 1:20PM

You're right, most BMW drivers probably don't care for other people. As for the rest of us, well these ratings are a welcome addition.

Commenter

Golly

Location

Date and time

November 28, 2013, 2:11PM

If pedestrian safety is not included in the total score the manufacturers won't have such a great incentive to improve it.It does not matter in Australialand anyway when you can install a great bull bar in front of the vehicle. Mad.

Commenter

carbon copy footprint

Location

Date and time

November 28, 2013, 2:13PM

The NCAP ratings have lost much of their credibility because of stupid changes like this. Rather than breaking the rankings down into specific areas, they give a single rating which includes all their latest whims and results in ratings changing over time.

The refusal to give cars 5 stars unless they included a seatbelt warning chime that couldn't be turned off was the first indication they'd lost the plot, the inclusion of pedestrian safety ratings in the overall assessment here just confirms that fact.

How out of touch they are is shown by Clarkes comment "“We don’t want manufacturers making customers pay for safety,”. Who the hell does he think pays for it then - the Easter Bunny?

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Trogdor

Location

Date and time

November 28, 2013, 2:47PM

Lots of pedestrians are killed by cars - pedestrians comprise about 1/8th of all road fatalities. See http://grapevine.net.au/~mccluskeyarundell/Ped_casualty.pdf for some statistics.

And I can't see that car manufacturers should care less about killing pedestrians than they do about killing passengers. If the object of the system is to minimise road deaths (and it is), the death of pedestrians is just as serious as the death of passengers.

If the rating system "tricks" you into buying a car which is safe for pedestrians as well as passengers, I regard that as a societal good. Pedestrians are people to.

Commenter

weterpebb

Location

Hornsby

Date and time

November 28, 2013, 3:39PM

Except weterpebb, that system is becoming discredited with the public who are confused and fed up with it because it doesn't tell them what they want to know.

If the crash testers gave up their nanny-knows-best sentiments for a while and instead focused on having easier to understand categories, that would make for an improvement.

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Trogdor

Location

Date and time

November 28, 2013, 4:13PM

1/8th would be few.

Commenter

Problem?

Location

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November 28, 2013, 5:27PM

The goal of the organisations setting safety standards is to reduce overall deaths, not just passenger/driver deaths. They're an arm of the Government, typically.

As an occasional pedestrian, I'm perfectly fine with that.

Possibly you don't mind the thought of killing casual bystanders in order to save yourself a few dollars. It takes all types, I suppose, Psychopaths are people too.

Commenter

Ronny

Location

Sydney

Date and time

November 28, 2013, 6:49PM

@Peds, Its comments like this that make me so dislike SUVs. This sort of survival of the fittest approach to car driving. Instead of two medium cars crashing and both occupants suffering injury, you now get a big and a small car colliding where one family walks away relatively unharmed and the other ends up dead. I'd just hope that someone else doesn't by a bigger heavier car better able to kill your family instead of that caring driver's kids.

Commenter

Peter

Location

Oz

Date and time

November 28, 2013, 8:43PM

Very few crashes involve pedestrians?Clearly you haven't read the article in any depth“Pedestrian protection is a very important part of road safety - a third of the Australian annual road toll is what we term ‘vulnerable road users’, such as cyclists and pedestrians,” Clarke said.